1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the art of ring binders, such photo albums, school notebooks and the like. More particularly, the invention relates to a system for preventing the removal of pages from the album in a retail establishment and reducing the amount of page theft and product destruction which currently takes place. The page protection system prevents the removal of pages from one album and the placement thereof in a another album being purchased by a retail customer or the addition of refill sets to a new album. After removal of the protection system pages may be removed or added easily and quickly.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Ring binders of all sorts and sizes are well-known in the art and are used for photo albums, school notebooks, presentation materials, etc. Typically, such products include a plurality (two and three being the most common) of ring element pairs, at least one of which has a generally C-shape. The ring element pairs each have ends which can be opened or placed together. When opened, pages for the binder or album can be placed over the rings or removed. When closed the pages are held securely. If both of the ring elements are C-shaped, a generally circular ring is formed, and if one of the ring pairs is C-shaped and the other is L-shaped, the well-know D-ring is formed. In most cases, the rings are mounted on a ring binder body which is secured by fasteners to the spline of a photo album. It is also known to attach the ring binder body to the rear cover of the binder.
A variety of ring mounting and opening systems are also well-known, most of which may be used with the present invention. The simplest includes a pair of elongate metal plates mounted behind a ring binder body, the non-contacting ends of the ring elements passing through a front surface of the body and being joined to separate plates. The ring elements are opened and closed by merely pulling apart the contacting ends of the ring elements. Most of such systems "snap" into the fully opened or fully closed positions, due to the manner in which the plates are mounted to the back of the binder body.
Other ring closure systems are also very common. One of these includes a tab, located at an end of the ring binder body, pressure on which causes the plates, and the attached ring elements to snap into their open positions. These devices can be closed, either by manual pressure on the ring elements or by lifting up on the aforementioned tabs.
Several problems are still being encountered in the retail sale of such binders and albums. The main problem occurs when a customer unlawfully opens the ring elements to remove, add to or substitute pages for those which are supplied by the manufacturer. As an example, photograph albums are typically sold with a predetermined number of album pages, each designed to support a plurality of photographs. The albums, however, are designed to hold many more pages, and the manufacturer makes, and the retailer sells, "refill sets". Unfortunately, it is common for a customer to open a new album, insert refill sheets and close the album, discarding the packaging of the refill sheets. The customer then presents the enlarged album to the checkout person who scans the UPC code of the album itself and does not notice the theft of the pages. Similar examples could be provide for other types of binders and pages, where punched paper sets, index sets, colored dividers and the like, each made to be sold separately, are placed into the binder before the product is taken from the store. When customers remove pages from one book and insert them into another, or insert refill sets or other products into the binders, a theft occurs. One result is that consumers lose confidence in the retailer's product offerings, because some consumers may get less than what they are paying for. Retailers lose sales because their inventory shows unusable product or the loss of the refill sets causing, on occasion, the retailers to mark down product. Manufacturers end up paying warranty claims, when the product was perfect when it was manufactured. Overall, this is a losing proposition for all involved.
The theft of refill sets and other similar "accessories" for ring binders and albums costs manufacturers and retailers hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, and a solution to this problem which would not significantly increase the manufacturing cost of the products would represent a significant advance in the art. Currently, the only truly effective method for preventing thefts is to apply a shrink wrap around an entire product. This method, however, is unsatisfactory because the customer typically wants to open and view the product before purchase. Using photo albums again as the example, the customer may want to know whether the photograph pages may be used on both sides, whether they are sized for particular size photographs, etc. Heretofore, when shrink wrap has been used around the entire product, sales of that product are lower than for those which the customer can open and inspect.
Other methods have also been tried. One is the use of heat shrinkable loops placed around the individual ring element pairs and is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/108,936 filed Jul. 1, 1998 by Randall D. Williams and entitled "SAFETY SEAL RING LOCK". This application is assigned to the Assignee of the present invention.